Is the Marlins’ new ballpark really so unfriendly to home runs? SB Nation’s Wendy Thurm points out that, among NL venues, AT&T and Petco Parks are actually more hostile. She suggests that the lack of round-trippers in Miami may be tied to the retractable roof’s being closed in all but a handful of games.

Here was umpire Jerry Meals’s less than finest hour in 2011. Via Mark Townsend of Big League Stew: Here is umpire Jerry Meals’s less than finest hour in 2012, a game that ended in a 5–4 victory for the Orioles on Saturday.

The reason we’re uncertain about Rosenthal’s theory is because we lack good ways to test it. We should, of course, try to seek out those ways and actually do that. But until then, his theory is of very little utility. It doesn’t help us predict what the Dodgers will do. (And let’s face it, the rest of the season is not so long that a poor performance out of the Dodgers would do much in confirming it.) And because the theory seeks to explain previously observed behavior, it has the uncomfortable feeling of being a post hoc rationalization, rather than predicting something (as J. Wheatley-Schaller of Vegas Watch pointed out, the article would be much more compelling had it been written BEFORE the poor run of performance). So while Rosenthal is not necessarily wrong (saying again, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence), he’s not contributing a lot of substance to the discussion with his theory, either.

Brandon McCarthy remains in the critical-care unit of a Bay Area hospital after being stuck in the head with a line drive last Wednesday afternoon. Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle points out that the condition of the A’s pitcher’s has improved somewhat and that he has been Tweeting since Friday evening. Nevertheless, everyone should keep McCarthy in their thoughts and prayers.

Most Popular

One of the chief criticisms of affirmative action is that it devalues credentials that minorities could otherwise use to distinguish themselves. If college admissions were purely merit-based, employers would have no reason to discount an impressive degree just because it is held by a black or Hispanic applicant. ...
Read More

Following International Women's Day 2018, a host of policies have been promoted as ways to advance women's careers. CNBC, for example, has run a story arguing that policies such as parental leave for both parents can raise women’s incomes. In the Huffington Post we can read that adopting the welfare policies of ...
Read More

One of the silly notions loose in America is that there is some virtue in buying local -- preferring sellers simply because they're located in "your area" (city, county, state, country) over those located elsewhere. In other words, geographical discrimination is, supposedly, good.
Governments and governmental ...
Read More

Jeff Roe, who managed Senator Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign in 2016, has a message for Republican congressional candidates: Don’t run from Trump this year. Instead they should “[f]ix bayonets and charge the hill.” What exactly does this mean? It’s not that they should “support the president’s ...
Read More

A Washington, D.C., city councilman has issued an apology for suggesting that a cabal of Jewish financiers manipulates weather patterns to exercise control over urban areas.
Trayon White (D., Ward 8) posted a Facebook video Friday during a brief snowfall in which he complained about the weather and argued ...
Read More

As detailed in my column over the weekend about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s flouting of Justice Department standards, there are significant differences between the two-count criminal information to which Mueller permitted Richard Gates to plead guilty and both (a) the original 12-count District of Columbia ...
Read More

The use of assassination raises two difficult sets of questions.
First: Is it effective? Can the elimination of an individual significantly change the course of history? Make the world a safer place? Save the lives of other human beings?
Second: Is it morally and legally justified? Is it ethically and ...
Read More

An unforced error from a Vatican communications office the other day drove me a little something like crazy. The nature of the unforced error is that it is wholly unnecessary and typically distracting. And so it was.
Days before, as the fifth anniversary of Pope Francis’s election as pope was approaching, a ...
Read More